Specyficzna odmiana pisania o pisarstwie lagrowym
A Specific Variety of Writing on Soviet-Labour-Camp Literature

Summary/Abstract: Review: Bartłomiej Krupa, Wspomnienia obozowe jako specyficzna odmiana pisarstwa historycznego [‘Labour-camp memoirs as a specific variety of historic writing’], Universitas, Kraków 2006. Bartłomiej Krupa analyses certain motifs shared by recollection records and dictated by the way Soviet labour camps (lagers) functioned, ones that are set (both by authors and by the author of the study in question) in a sequence determined in cultural anthropology as a rite of passage. Depiction of labour-camp memories as a record of transformation (initiation) is noteworthy. Certain methodological assumptions seem disputable, though: too literal or unilateral approach of theoretical inspirations, mainly those derived from narrativism. Doubts are also triggered by certain other theses, such as e.g. the resolute statement that criticism of sources is helpless against lager memories. Moreover, it is difficult to agree with invalidation of a mimetic style of reception of memoirs texts and their consequently being replaced by allegorical style which holds memoirs not in terms of account bur rather, the record of a transformation that took place inside the author after s/he entered the lager world. It is namely doubtless that memoirs or recollections are factual evidence and a record of (anti-)initiation experience in one.

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